In hindsight, I lost my self control and made a very serious mistake in January. The seriousness of which i couldn’t really comprehend until now as i’ve paid a heavy price for it. But we’ll get to that soon.

Wow. That last blog of mine (”for it is i that command your anger“) provoked a huge response. I was really moved by what people wrote to me about it in reply. I forget how many people tune in and read this stuff every day. It was written spontaneously on the train but been forwarded on a lot- even people who don’t know me have read it and sent me messages. I guess it’s a return to form of the greatly-loved MySpace blogs i used to do. Despite them being essay length, what i write always gets fully read somehow and is warmly received. You get to feel my heart break and my smile open up when the sun shines.

The silence of the ones who didn’t was almost as interesting. A lot of people ask why i talk so openly about supposedly private things and put them out in the public domain. My dear mother chides me for it every time i see her and nobody else quite gets it. The answer isn’t simple, but one of the main reasons is that it helps people. It helps me too, but it liberates others to talk and think about the same things. If it’s printed here, it’s no longer hidden in the shadows and recesses of the soul. It’s honest, and it’s from my heart. There’s nothing up here you couldn’t find out through talking to me in the pub. In a lot of ways it’s actually easier to talk to the world and/or a crowd than it is quietly to one person.

My nephew has given me the fuzzy-headed cold he also gave to his mummy, but i’m going to forgive him for it as it also transpires that despite being only 3 years old, it looks as if he is following in his uncle’s footsteps with the ladies and has a 3 year old girlfriend at playschool called Katey. She has brown hair and brown eyes apparently, and his friend Harvey has a girlfriend called Millie. I want to talk about a little of what’s been going through my head in the last week, as the change in me is quite dramatic. Like i said before - change the paradigm, change the world.

Lately i’ve become very sensitive to my father and his ways, as i’m more concious than ever about how many things i have involuntarily picked up from him. I see his seething, coma-like indifference, lifeless impotence and childish dictat more than ever. I’m studying myself to determine which parts of me are from him and working out how to exorcise them like the revolting demons they are. I actually can’t believe how absurd his way of “living” is and how utterly blind he is. It shocks me and worries me. I know that the final thing i have to do is grieve him as my father is essentially dead to me, and our relationship is non-existent. That hole in my heart needs to be grieved and sealed whether i like it or not. I can go willingly or resist.

You can program the mind at will, but the heart is a different story. A father’s role is incredibly important and easily undermined. I’ve always denied the importance of my father but suffered for his absence invisibly, which has meant a whole lifetime of repressed anger and hurt that only surfaces in the same way his does - unexpected explosive rage and chronic moodiness. I am quite the cheery type but when it comes to the bigger more important issues, things change.

I don’t attach easily to anyone and trusting someone with my heart is terrifying, which is why i never do it if i can help it. It’s an impossibly difficult balance of wanting to be close to someone but trying to keep a safe distance for when it inevitably goes wrong. I love very, very intensely and i adore people who do the same. The only thing you have to do to win my heart is to love like crazy. You can’t keep a distance in relationships because it’s only fair to reciprocate the same commitment as you are receiving from the other person. I often provoke that inequality by wanting more commitment from someone else than i am willing to give myself.

I was deeply hurt. I felt betrayed, worthless and humiliated. I was nearly physically sick and that familiar burning sensation was about as intense as it got. I couldn’t see for my absolutely uncontrollable rage and lashed out over and over again. I wanted blood.

I got it.

Anger is my traditional response to any kind of hurt as i’ve never been the “sit there and take it” type to say the least. The human grief response is well known and documented - shock, anger, sadness, experimentation and finally, acceptance. Pulling down the curtain of assumed hatred is a very effective defence and a way of numbing it all out. Somehow gritting your teeth, tensing up and widening your eyes contains the emotional wave and helps you to stop feeling so powerless. Most men do it as we’re not as emotionally resilient as the fairer sex.

If i think you’re a moron, i’ll poke fun at you. If i can’t be bothered with you, you stop existing to me. If you’ve pissed me off, i’ll rant at you. If i’m scared, i lock down and criticise you. If you’ve hurt me, i’ll lash out.

I don’t trust authority. I don’t trust anyone who has any kind of power over me in any way - legally, financially, emotionally - any type. It’s a very simple explanation, and that is because anyone who has had power over me has misused it horribly to harm me.  Althoguh i’m coming to see that they were only human, my heart will not let me be vulnerable in any way. It’s no coincidence that those i’ve been most attached to have suffered so violently for the hurt they’ve caused me.

But you have to dive into the wound and cauterise it to seal it shut. I realised what my father would have done in response to what was thrown at me in January. Yeah. Guess what. Exactly what i did. At that moment that the rushing aching pain in my chest came back. I felt like a fucking idiot. I may have maintained the moral high ground but it means very little when you think of all the times people have said “you’re just like your dad” and you’ve laughed at them for such a cheap and desperate shot. I may be different in a lot of ways but when it comes to the fundamental human response to extreme pain i clearly learned by example.

The price? The only girl i ever wanted to marry and give the world to came to see me as a genocidal monster of epidemic proportions, which locked her up like ice and terrified her for good and destroyed her trust and affection for me. I didn’t care back then - all i saw was a very nasty, cynical and hurtful person i wanted to bring back down to earth with a vengeance. It’s a heavy price and has weighed on my heart all year. But it was my act and my behaviour, and i must own it and take responsibility for it. It was my mistake and i made it. I am a man, and I accept my part and the consequences. What i should have done is to have shut my mouth, walk away and spoken to her a few months later. Quite a fuck up, and not my finest hour.

I did it again because the next time round was 10x as hurtful. Me lashing out was expected, so i simply did what was expected of me out of spite. Again, not quite my finest hour. I can’t take it back, but i’m not sure if i want to as without it i wouldn’t be here right now re-programming and getting better for it. I’m sure there will be a reason behind all of this loss and carnage.

The consequence is that i am now a monster that always reacts like that every time i get angry, and everything i do is designed to ruin lives. Every disagreement, angry moment and/or frustration is another explosive life-threatening rage that is terrifying. What i did, i did because it was an extreme situation and i reacted in an extreme way. Ironically that person who is terrified of me lashes out just as badly, but their weapon is the deadliest form of anger: silence. There’s no more obvious way to express your own rage. That person doesnt know it but they’ve changed and influenced me than any other human being has done.

I did it again in Autumn with the PT project and my girlfriend of the time. It’s what i know, and very much the male thing - up the aggression level, divide and conquer and heal whilst the rest of the world is dusting itself down. As long as they’re fighting fires they can’t hurt you. It’s a very dramatic display of showing how hurt you are. But anger blocks empathy and you can’t see the other side. Don’t get me wrong the other side always, has a lot of blood on their hands but there’s nothing you can do about them at all. Only you can change your own part of the world.

I can’t start a war every time i get hurt, as much as i want. I can’t lash out and destroy everything in response to people and circumstances that threaten me. So i have to re-learn and re-train my way of dealing with extreme stress so that i don’t become someone people fear. I could leave it, defiantly and produly refuse to apologise and just procrastinate it away for 5 years until that devil in me had ruined even more. It’s not easy to put down that anger mechanism - you’re naked, vulnerable and powerless. It’s not exactly unnatural for a man to want to invade a country when he has been wronged, so to get some perspective on things i’m not alone at all. Women have good reason to fear an angry man. Even more so if they’ve been harmed or scared by one in the past and maybe even feared for their life.

Suffering does teach you sensitivity and empathy though, and i know very little about either of them. I’m certainly not tolerant and write people off so easily - another paternal trait. I don’t really do understanding or forgiving because its so hard to connect with someone else’s humanity and be accepting of their failings. I’m not perfect and neither are they at all - i just wish i could feel that compassion when i need to. I’ve survived until now by cutting people out, gritting my teeth and refusing to give anyone the time of day when it comes to rehabilitation.

I want to be the compassionate guy who has the heart of steel. I’m not too strong like that. But i know i don’t want to follow the pattern of explosive rage and unpredictability that scares the life out of people, particularly those who are deeply fragile from being stalked or hit by evil men who came before. But i also want to be able to be furiously angry if it fair for me to do so without the other person over-reacting and thinking they’ll be attached or killed. I have no idea what to do instead of it. The very worst situation is when the other person is silent - when you communicate maturely and regular i shouldn’t think it actually becomes much of an issue. If you’re too scared to even talk about difficult or painful things without fearing for your life, disaster is on its way whether happens.

So the devil must be forced out. I won’t be that man or allow the people who love me to be scared of me. I won’t be a father that terrorises his children, or a husband that terrorises his wife. I just will not allow it. I can’t allow it. I won’t pass on or carry on what was forced on me. I will not be like my father. This time it cost me too much.  I am not going through what i have gone through this year again. To put it bluntly, i couldn’t take it a second time around. It’s painful to acknowledge but i have to follow my own advice and deal with those issues. I finally learnt what actually matters, but only but destroying it. How ironic.

From the thinking i’ve been doing, i think it’s about the anger. My sis so wisely and femininely said to me a while ago that i was a chick and needed to break out of my own shell. How i laughed. A chick? Don’t be so fucking gay. Then she explained that if you crack the shell of an egg from the outside, the chick will inevitably die. The only way it survives the gestation process is to break its way out of the egg itself when the it is ready. She likened it to me finding my way out of my own hard shell  Ridiculous analog, but she has a point.

I’ve come to see that the red haze of rage that follows me everywhere used to protect me, but is actually hindering me. It’s the first time that i’ve been brave enough to contemplate letting it go. It’s blocking me from my own happiness and being able to connect with the world. What’s coming out at those extreme times is that repressed anger. My system got so overloaded with anger and frustration that it shut down to avoid any more, and the mechanism it did with was clinical depression. Lifting the cloud of depression means letting go of that anger. So easy to write yet so fucking difficult to do. It will take a lot of love and trust on my part.

It’s amazing what can happen when you let go and see the world in a new way. It changes everything. Prayer has helped me enormously as my spirituality is the most important thing in my life. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to work out what’s wrong with me, only to find out that that shelf of frustration 10ft thick has kept me virtually blind to the fact that the shelf itself is the fucking problem.

So the questions are the same. Will you believe in me like i believe in you? Will you put the past aside and forgive in me same way i’ve forgiven you? Do i have to ask you “where were you” again and find myself asking you over and over again? Will you accept that i’m not perfect and actually am pretty fucking useless? Will you accept me as i am and help me like i want to help you? Can you love me regardless of everything i’ve done wrong?

Time to call it a night for me. The days are getting darker earlier now, and this year wasn’t the year i thought it would be. I’m still not sure if i’m ok with that, but i suspect i will be. Nothing is impossible and goodbye to one part of you is an introduction to something new and wonderful you’ve yet to be able to see until it announces itself. I don’t care how short or long my life is - i just want a good life. One that amazes and inspires, the fairytale that happened in real life. All of these things ends in the way we choose and there are no rules for us to play by.

Remember where i was when you ask me “where were you?”, because the answer will be that i was there, but either you didn’t see me, thought i was too busy or didn’t care, turned me away or were too scared to ask me to help or forgive you.

Where am i right now? With you, by your side, as you read this.

She said I don’t know why you ever would lie to me, Like I’m a little untrusting when I think that the truth is gonna hurt you, And I don’t know why you couldn’t just stay with me, You couldn’t stand to be near me, When my face don’t seem to want to shine, ‘cuz It’s a little bit dirty well

Don’t just stand there, say nice things to me, I’ve been cheated I’ve been wronged, And you don’t know me, I can’t change, I won’t do anything at all

I wanna push you around, well I will, well I will.

“Push” by Matchbox 20